A Balance, Redefined

Keep hitting that track once a week/every couple weeks and those times will come down significantly. The track is such a different beast and it is tough to adjust to it and to the quicker paces it demands.

See you next week.

Thanks Dave. I'm looking forward to it. The added pressure of the BYU team I hope will make it more "fun". I know I'm excited. Do you know your travel plans yet? I'm trying to free up the car for Sandra and I'm hoping to jump in as someone passes through SLC up to Logan. I figure afterwards the return trip will be via 80 to 15 and I could get dropped off that way. Not sure how to corridinate this one...

We haven't really figured it all out yet - we are trying to find someone who could bring the car up to Logan and then have it down in Park City for us.

That's a decent workout. I think if anything its an ease of pace thing for you. Try a few workouts with 8-10 x 200 at brisk but relaxed pace (33-35 for you) and then come back to the 800s etc. and they won't feel so fast.

Eric, I agree. However, I do think it is a result of my change of focus during my SLC buildup as my calves are actually a little sore today! I am surprised that doing 8000s at a slower pace than my last two 5Ks would have felt so hard. However, after hitting some good 200s I agree it should come back. I did do some strides on Wed again.

This was a good workout, Adam. You should come run the track with me & Josh. Share the pain.

Chad, What is the workout for next week. I may be interested assuming it won't break us for WBR...

I hope to be joining you guys when I'm healthy. Reading about speed work and not being able to do it is like some kind of combination between torture and porn for runners.

Eric, Interesting analogy... I'm sure you'll be there before you know it. Hopefully in time for the Des 10K...

Yet in 2006 you would not have run a sub-2:40 on the SLC course fighting 20mph winds in the first half. Goes to show that Yasso's are only remotely correlated to your marathon performance.

I think your absence from the track had less to do with this than the fact that you were suffering more than you realize from the lack of sleep and stress. Consider this - you averaged a faster pace in a 5 K on a slippery road in SLC Track Club race, and you had done absolutely nothing on the track prior to that. I found in this situation the best form of training is to sleep during your runs and make them long enough so you get quantity of sleep as well as quality. Speed sessions, and even tempos load the nervous system pretty hard, and if is already loaded by non-running things and you are not sleeping adequately, it does not need additional loading. Pretty much every run needs to be a trip to nature, a chat with a friend, a time to relax. The aerobic power will be maintained and even improved while your nerves can rest. Then when it is time to race, you can push yourself better.

Thank you for the input Sasha. This is one thing I struggle with. After Magna I felt like I could have gone at least 20 seconds faster and just wimped out due to the "fear of speed" I was/am hoping to get the track work to get over that mental blockade. However, I agree with you about the mental fatigue affecting the neural fatigue. I actually originally had planned doing more speed today but didn't do it for the very reason you just mentioned. After talking with Eric some I instead just added in about 5X1/2 block strides each of the last two days.

On a more serious note, I agree with Sasha 100% on loading the nervous system. In the end, I really believe that training the nervous system is the ultimate endeavor of long-term training.

As you are well aware, what little longetudinal studies on endurance athletes that exist show that long after VO2max and LT as a percentage of VO2max plateau, running economy continues to increase. While there may be a metabolic component to this, I think the majority of it is neural. In fact, metabolic changes that occur due to fiber-type drift, etc, are almost certainly neural in origin because the nervous system dictates fiber-type.

As I can attest from personal experience, perpetual CNS overload will kill both speed AND running economy.

I'm a huge fan of [b]relaxed[/b] repeats of 150-200 meters because they are short enough that you can run them at a decent speed without a lot of stress (in every sense of the word) and long enough to establish rhythm which is the foundation of economy. The value of almost anything in biology has to be interpreted by contex. With running there are a few training sweet spots found within an almost universal training context and relaxed 200 meter repeats is a sweet spot.

I think 200s are the way to go for me next Tues. That way I'm also as fresh as possible for WBR.

How are you doing pain wise?

Pretty good.

I think of turned the corner but I'm not ready for speed work yet. For practicalities sake I'll stay away from anything fast until after my Gannett Peak expedition because its imperative I'm healthy for this.

Funny you should mention mood.

Today was my first day off and I felt like I got ran over by a truck. It was impossible to focus for any length of time. I finally drank a Coke around 3 to see if some caffeine could give me lift to get anything of worth done today. It seemed to help a little. I'm feeling a lot better this evening.

I'd even recommend putting a piece of tape over your watch so you can't see how fast you are running (this will allow to take splits for the post-mortem. Just run fast and relaxed and don't be afraid to cut it off if you body tells you you're done before you complete the number you had in your head when you started. Being a hero during this workout is antithetical to its purpose.